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To Expand Its Brand, a Sponsor Goes Golfing

WEB.COM, which provides Internet services to small and medium-size businesses, is switching up its low-key profile by signing on to sponsor the golf circuit for promising players seeking to qualify for the elite PGA Tour.

The company, based in Ponte Vedra, Fla., outside Jacksonville, took over the tour sponsorship this week from Nationwide, the insurance company, and renamed it the Web.com Tour. The change is occurring as the PGA Tour has adopted new rules that will increase the tour’s role as the primary pathway to golf’s top circuit.

Web.com decided to become the golf tour’s umbrella sponsor to increase brand awareness, said David L. Brown, its chief executive, who noted: “We have a great name, but the general market does not know we exist. I would be surprised if they had ever heard our name.”

The company, which has three million customers, is stepping out at a time when more small and medium-size companies are relying on the Internet to attract customers, but few have the resources to employ internal technology experts.

With Web.com’s umbrella sponsorship, which extends through 2021, the tour’s new logo and the company name will be visible on most surfaces at the tour’s 27 locations around the country. The rollout begins with this week’s United Leasing Championship, at the Victoria National Golf Club, near Evansville, Ind.

The deal, which was announced this week at the AT&T National at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., continues the Golf Channel’s live telecasts of tour events. The broadcasts of Web.com tournaments and other Professional Golfers Association events, according to the PGA Tour, reach 715 million households worldwide, which gives Web.com much broader television exposure than it has had.

“A company can be a small player and buy the entire tour — meaning it has its name everywhere during each stop. That’s obvious equity,” said Bill Nielsen, vice president of sales for Scarborough Research, in New York. “The fact I know the Web.com name means that, right off the bat the sponsorship has done its job.”

Golf, he said, appeals to an older, well-educated and high-end demographic. But the sport also reaches a wider audience, he noted. His company’s research found that 19 percent of Americans attended, listened to or watched on television a P.G.A. event in a 12-month period between 2011 and 2012.

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Web.com used an e-mail campaign to announce it was getting into golf sponsorship.

Web.com also plans to tap golf fans by holding free forums for local small- and medium-size businesses to familiarize them with the company’s offerings, and to work with local charities, said Mr. Brown, a former banker.

“Our core customer is a company with 100 or fewer employees, and those like the hair salon with fewer than 20 employees are our sweet spot. We get domain names, build and host Web sites, create their Facebook pages — in short, everything they need,” he said.

The company, which was started in 1997, went public in 2005 and uses a subscription model to provide services to its customers, some 90 percent of whom are in the United States.

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Mr. Brown said the company was preparing a series of commercials, which will range from 30 seconds to two minutes, to tell stories of small-business successes with its services. No date has been set for them to go on the air, he said.

Web.com’s breakout move comes as it competes with such high-wattage companies as GoDaddy, a Web hosting and Internet domain name provider, which has drawn attention with Super Bowl commercials featuring scantily clad women.

Like GoDaddy, Web.com has been producing its own commercials — but without the racy element — which have appeared on late-night cable and television networks directing viewers to call an 800 number for more information. (GoDaddy raised the competitive stakes recently when it hired Deutsch New York as its advertising agency to create commercials to broadcast during the Summer Olympics.)

The Web.com sponsorship follows an announcement by the PGA Tour’s commissioner, Timothy W. Finchem, about qualifying for the top tour. The new rules shore up the Web.com tour’s position as the proving ground for the PGA Tour, a change that is expected to attract more recognizable players.

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The Web.com Tour players will continue to be ranked by their tournament money winnings, with the top 25 earners advancing to the next rung of competition. Starting in the fall of 2013, the number of qualifying players will be expanded to 50. The players move up to compete on the PGA Tour, where they can earn millions in prize money and make lucrative company endorsement deals if they do well.

The Web.com Tour began in 1990 as the Ben Hogan Tour (after the legendary professional player). Nike took up the sponsorship three years later, followed by Buy.com until 2003, when Nationwide became the sponsor. The insurance giant bowed out this year to instead support its hometown PGA Tour event near Columbus, Ohio.

The newly named Web.com tour raised $7.35 million for charity last year, according to the PGA Tour. Mr. Finchem, in a telephone interview from PGA Tour headquarters, also in Ponte Vedra, said that Web.com was a good fit as a sponsor because the company had customers across the country.

“So the company is interested in every single market where our tour goes,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2012, on Page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: To Expand Its Brand, A Sponsor Goes Golfing. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe